Panoptics, Surveillance and Concrete Abstraction: Modesty Blaise Beyond the Glitz

The panoramic view that we get from the Havengebouw in Modesty Blaise, directed by Joseph Losey in 1966, does not spectacularize the city, but rather the actions that take place inside it, by playing with notions of surveillance. In this case, the acts of seeing and being seen are in focus, and this is done through the relationship created through the shot between the cinematic apparatus, the viewer, the characters, the narrative and the city, which I will all describe in detail further on.

Layers of meaning: presence, iconicity, power

De Certeau, Clarke and Schwarzer all talk about power. But so do their forerunners: for example, Clarke references Fleisch (1987), for whom “proximity represents power”. For Nietzsche “architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms” (1889), and for Foucault “representation is power, a power well able to construct and manipulate perceptions of reality” (1977). It’s then inevitable that when the city (architecture) and cinematic images (representation) meet, we will see instances of power. Hence one of the major threads we have been looking at in our research is based on those ideas of power in urban environments, what constitutes them in the city that we experience day by day and how they are enforced and performed in film. We will be looking at this mostly in our second presentation, through a comparative approach of one fiction film, one newsreel and one reportage shot at the Havengebouw, a powerful building when one experiences its presence, but which has rarely been the object of the gaze – rather a place from where the gaze can be enacted (the panoramic view from the terrace etc.).